


No Door Save One

by primeideal



Category: Children of the Star - Sylvia Louise Engdahl
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 18:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18212006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: The death and legacy of the Archpriest.





	No Door Save One

The last years of the Archpriest Noren were spent tilling the ground. He picked weeds and nourished crops, carrying watering cans from the river to the fields and lightly sprinkling seedlings on the days that rain did not fall.

“Is it true,” asked a young girl, “that in the Days of the City, the Scholars summoned forth clean rain from the heavens?”

The time of the City had not been days, Noren thought. It had stood for centuries. Compared to that—and, he hoped, the times to come—the era his people were enduring was a mere anomaly.

But it was an anomaly that had seen much of his life, and would see what remained of it. “Yes,” he said. “For the people of the past were not hardy as we are now, and could not drink the waters that flowed among them.”

“Give thanks to the Archpriest,” said a man—the child’s father? “For he has transformed us from weakness to strength.”

“I am no miracle-worker,” said Noren. “I have merely found a new way to shape the world. Perhaps you, too, will make some marvelous discovery with the tools you have.”

She looked skeptical, and Noren held his tongue. It was enough that her generation would continue to read and write, and add their own history to the annals of those who had come before. When the Scholars returned, there would be knowledge to bridge the old ways and the new. Brica, the Archivist of Providence, could be infuriatingly bossy and demanding at times, but Noren and Lianne agreed there was no one better to ensure that their written books were preserved.

Noren and Lianne, of course, were also the only people to know that Brica was the daughter of Denrul and Veldry. The younger Scholars, like most of their peers, had been part of the starship delegation; those few of Stefred’s generation who had stayed were long since dead.

“At this moment,” Lianne had tried to explain, “Brek and Beris, all of them, they are not so old as you.”

“Travelling among the stars slows the rate at which you age?” Noren had, eventually, concluded. “Is this why your lifespan is different than mine?” 

“No. Well, yes, in part—but this occurs even among your species. Because they’re travelling at elevated speeds, relative to light.”

“The speed of light is not so elevated,” Noren pointed out, “as the Mother Star has not yet reached us.”

Lianne had quickly given up her physics digressions and reverted to comparative biology. It had taken some time for Noren to convince her that he truly did take joy in hearing tales of species that had evolved on worlds unlike his own. The bitterness of knowing he could not see them for himself was more than tempered by the sweetness of her evocative descriptions. Moreover, even she was fascinated by the slow growth of Noren’s trees. Their slender trunks and narrow leaves were of a type she had never encountered.

They changed color, too, gaining and losing their leaves in response to annual temperature variance. It was something Noren had never seen; none of the dreams from the Six Worlds had thought it noteworthy enough to preserve, nor had Lianne brought it up. “My last posting was to a planet where the broad leaves were green all the year round,” she said, while he marvelled at the children kicking up a red and gold pile.

He gave thought to those who would come after him, of course. Yeind, a son of Futurity, was the first among the High Priests, who faithfully observed Founding Day and presided over marriages just as the Scholars of old had. Imchel, who had been born in the villages, was the chief doctor. There were still nurse-midwives, and despite all their expertise, there were nevertheless stillbirths and mothers who died in childbirth. For all Noren had seen, all his experimentation and innovation, he could not help but grieve when young laborers died trying to give life to the next generation. “Our species evolved for millennia, tens of thousands of years on the Six Worlds,” he said. “How are we still so vulnerable?”

Lianne, knowing he was not in the mood for sustained inquiry, said only “It is the same in many places.”

Weeks later, as they were weeding, she mentioned that in nearly all of the human species she had run across, their brains grew to such outsized sizes that they needed a long childhood to mature, and that their gestational period could not extend much longer if the infant was to fit inside an adult woman. It did not stir him, not consciously, but after so many years together he had become unknowingly adept at discerning her intentions. Complexity was costly, but well worth it. It was not a complete answer—nothing could be, in finite lifetimes—but it was one facet of the mystery.

Yet for all his advice to his successors, Noren knew that there would not be one single person to take up his mantle, then or in the future. When the Scholars returned and the Mother Star shone forth, there would be countless scientists synthesizing their knowledge of unknown worlds, and sharing the truth of the Six Worlds’ history with all the people. Whatever form of leadership and social structure emerged, there would always be dissenters who followed in Noren’s footsteps even as they cursed his name. And with the culmination of prophecy, there would be more symbols that some would turn to and others reject as part of the eternal quest to comprehend the universe. He would not need to bequeath his secrets to another, nor utter prophecy to give hope to future generations, and he certainly had no intention of planning his martyrdom. His death would come on a day like any other, with plants springing up or shrivelling away, Lianne by his side, the empty City still embracing him.

* * *

Lianne had seen death and despair on many worlds. When she woke to feel Noren’s lifeless body beside her, an absence felt as much in her mind as by her hands, she was neither startled nor overcome. There would be time for grief later.

Yeind was already awake when she came to knock on his door. “Good morning,” he smiled. In retirement, she was still an eminent figure.

“I need a priest,” she said simply. “It’s Noren.”

Perhaps, even then, she was steadying him with the force of her mind, pushing away any excess of pity. “Of course,” he said.

He summoned the Scholar Fown, who was lanky and quiet, but scoffed at anyone who put others on pedestals. Fown would be able to treat Noren’s body as just another body, preparing it for burial outside the city walls. This was a new tradition that had sprung up after the departure of the starship. Noren had assured Esbrie, a dying villager, that she could be sent to the City if she wished. Though Esbrie had walked within it in silent awe on many of her final days, she had no wish to profane the holy place, even in death.

So she had been buried near what had once been the Outer Walls, and a simple stone marked her resting place. Noren had recited the slightly-altered words of ritual, even though there was no sending, no hidden reclamation of her body.

“Certainly you could preside,” said Fown, “if you wished.”

“Thank you for asking,” Lianne said. “I want to give the eulogy, but someone else ought to preside. Noren would not approve of me droning on the entire morning.”

She smiled, showing even the questioning Fown that it was okay to snicker. Noren had spoken to her on several occasions of Talyra’s funeral, and how he had not considered himself faithful enough to speak words of consolation. Lianne felt herself, not faithless, but unwilling to dominate the proceedings as both Noren’s wife and a Scholar in her own right. All the world would mourn Noren in their own way: better to have as many voices speaking for him as possible.

To Lianne’s surprise, Fown and Yeind both insisted on a wait of several days before the funeral. “Won’t it...smell?” she asked cautiously. Yes, she’d seen many more elaborate rituals on other worlds, but those rites had had technology equal to the proceedings. There were no sophisticated tools needed to lower human remains into the soil.

“This is one of the great mysteries of the priesthood,” said Fown, keeping a straight face.

“This is the Archpriest we’re talking about,” Yeind said. “There are no aircars nor radiophones to send word to Providence; they will hear in their own time. But those who live in between must have the right to attend.”

It was then that Lianne came to realize that Noren’s funeral would not be a simple ceremony like Esbrie’s, or even Brek’s several years before. It would be more akin to the departure of the starship: a cause for somber reflection, but also for joy among all the people, even those left behind, to celebrate the life of a man who had remade the world. He was her helpmeet, but he had been all of theirs, too.

It gave her time to gather her thoughts, to winnow out what was secret or could not be put into words, and revisit delightful memories. She would speak of his childhood in the village, the chores he resented but that the common people would sympathize with. His mentorship of Brek and Denrul, and the generation that followed him into exile. Even if she could not fully explain what it meant to be a heretic among heretics, she could tell tales of the first years in Futurity, the tasty and nauseating vegetables he experimented with in the harsh soil.

When the throng gathered, it was a far cry from the funerals she had seen in the Inner City, where the entire assembly wore blue robes and intoned the hymn in magnificent harmony. The people of the villages and new settlements wore brown clothes woven from workbeasts’ fur, and sang dissonantly if at all. And this, too, was beautiful.

_“His place is assured among those who lived before him and those who will come after, those by whom the Star is seen and their children’s children’s children, even unto infinite and unending time,”_ pronounced Fown, and all knew it for truth. Had he not built the cities where they lived, bonded their mothers and fathers in marriage, united adoptive children with their families? Was he not spoken of in wonder even by the Scholars who had departed on the starship, who might in their own lifetime behold the Mother Star?

_“And not in memory alone does he survive, for the universe is vast. Though its doors have been flung open anew, still there remains that wall through which there is no door save that through which he has passed..._ ”

That part, Noren had rewritten for Esbrie’s funeral. Generations had come and gone knowing the starships only as a hope, but Lianne’s and Noren’s had seen that fruition.

His presence, for so long a steadfast companion in her mind, no longer shone. No telepathy could pierce the distance between them. And yet faith dwelled in her, not as a tool of her station, but an outgrowth of the fractions of the universe she had glimpsed. The universe that had blessed her with a fulfilling career in the Anthropological Service, a loving marriage with Noren, dreams of the Six Worlds and planets just as far-flung, might itself be only a fragment of the cosmos and all the minds therein.

But it was not the hour to only give thought to what was out of reach. She had a duty to those near at hand: to tell the story of a man who argued with computers, crashed a starship, nearly perished of dehydration, and built their world’s future.

* * *

The morning was cold, and Noren pulled a bright blue Scholar’s robe tight around himself to keep out the chill. It fit well, he thought. He felt himself standing up straight, without any soreness in his back.

A tree stood in the middle of what looked to be a deserted public park. A soft, fluffy substance had collected near its roots; _snow_ , he thought. Heedless of the cold, a familiar-looking man stood beneath its branches.

“Do I know you?” Noren asked.

“Yes and no,” said the man. “My name is Yves.”

“Well met,” said Noren, walking forward to shake his hand. Yves’ grip was strong and warm despite the weather.

“Well met, Noren.”

He squinted. “I haven’t...” Something was wrong. No, not wrong, merely strange. The snow at his feet, the tree older and grander than any he’d planted. “Is this a dream?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Quite helpful. “A vision. Of the Six Worlds?” Yves’ complexion and the shape of his eyes were different from Noren’s own, but the man still looked like one of his people, more so than Lianne or her colleagues.

“Yes. This is Maurell Square, in the city of Jurn, on the planet of Faali. Where I grew up.”

How many dreams he’d seen and documents he’d read about the Six Worlds, and nothing like this! Things too commonplace to archive for future generations.

“Lianne...” He trailed off. There was something he was forgetting, he felt, yet he was unconcerned. “She has said that starship travel can alter time. Am I in the past?”

“No,” said Yves. “The future, if that. Or beyond time as you know it.”

“Do I have to puzzle this out by questions? You remind me of my friend Stefred. He is very wise, but also very aggravating.”

Yves laughed. “Is that so? I suspect he would be flattered by the comparison.”

“Do you know him, too?”

“Not personally, though of course I’ve heard tell of his work. I suspect I shall meet him in time. Or out of time, as it may be.”

“The starship...” Noren glanced up at the sky. The golden orb climbing toward the zenith looked much like his own sun. “That is the Mother Star?”

“As you would call it, yes. More from my mind than yours.”

“And the other Six Worlds, they are in this sky?”

“I confess I am not used to calling them to mind,” said Yves. “On Faali you could only have seen them at certain times of year, and even then only at certain hours.”

“So this is Faali, or not?”

“Sometimes it is only after the light we know has faded that we can perceive the greater universe,” Yves went on, as if he had not heard.

“Where is Lianne?” Noren asked. “You would like her, too.”

“You know where Lianne is, Noren.”

Of course he did. They were never far apart. They had ate and read and kissed and fallen asleep together, as they had so many times without change. Only she was gone.

No, it could not be, not Lianne, who had traversed worlds unseen and witnessed countless wonders. She would have outlasted him, perhaps not by long, but surely…

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t—I wasn’t sure—”

“Doubt is a tool just as faith is a treasure,” said Yves, “but even they give way to truth, in the end. You have spent your whole life seeking after truth even when it was not easy. Why should your death be anything less?”

Eternity was his, Yves seemed to say, for no reason other than to be. How long had it been since he was just Noren? Not a heretic or a Scholar or the Archpriest, merely himself? “You...you lived on the Six Worlds?”

“Yes.”

“And died there?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

Always riddles within riddles. “A starship traveller. One of the first Scholars?”

“Indeed. I hear that your people speak of me as _the_ First Scholar, in fact.”

Noren stared. He had always seen through the other man’s eyes, bringing with him his own memories: Talyra’s face and their son’s. Spoken “with” him, through the incredibly detailed computer file he’d left behind to safeguard the genetics material. Yet to see him as a man like himself, with a human face and name…

“There will be time,” Yves said, as if he could perceive Noren’s mind with all the clarity Lianne brought, “to share much, together. But as it is, I believe someone has been waiting to see you.”

Noren turned, and beyond the tree there was Talyra, wearing the deep green of a Technician, eyes bright with the light of the future, running to embrace him.


End file.
